


Solus

by plumedy



Series: Force Meditations [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Season/Series 01 Finale, Telepathy, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:53:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22024384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumedy/pseuds/plumedy
Summary: Solusis a Mando'a word that simultaneously means "alone" and "united as one".
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Series: Force Meditations [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643656
Comments: 44
Kudos: 360





	Solus

**Author's Note:**

> gratuitious overuse of italics and general linguistic bullshittery ahoy. Disclaimer: I know that in English these words have nothing to do with each other etymologically, but who knows about Galactic Basic? :D
> 
> This fandom makes me very happy and I love everyone in it <3

In Galactic Basic, the word _alone_ bears a curious similarity to the word _alien_. And perhaps there's a reason for that; they are, after all, conditions that often accompany each other.

The child is _alien_. The child is _alone_. He looks at the world through a pair of glassy brown eyes the colour of the cold ferrous rivers of Arhan, but he's a far cry from hulking feathered Arhanians. His size is roughly that of a Jawa youngling, but Jawas looked at him like he was an exotic toy. His hunting skills would make any Wookiee parent proud, but the Mandalorian doubts Wookiees would know what to do with him, either.

The child is naive; he's older than the Mandalorian but has yet to develop past infancy. The child is wise. He knows - he sees something the Mandalorian's kind would have to live a million lifetimes to understand.

The child knows how Din Djarin felt all those years ago as his world collapsed around him in fountains of burning earth.

_He looks up, past the rusty doorframe of the basement, at an enormous metal structure powered by the categorical imperative of death._

The little green being looks up, past him, straight at the muzzle of the IG-11's blaster.

_The figure in blued steel offers him a leather-gloved hand. The gesture is a promise._

He reaches out for the child with his leather-gloved hand. The gesture is a question he hasn't quite managed to word even to himself.

_He's carried upwards, into the calm merciless sky. Everyone he loved and was loved by is left behind, beneath the blaster fire, dust, and the haze of his memory._

The child clings onto him, his weight on the Mandalorian's shoulder so slight it's almost imperceptible. The Mandalorian doesn't know who, if anyone, loved this child and how many years ago that was. It is possible all the child has ever known is decade after decade of darkness.

The Mandalorian is _alien_. Alien to most communities he encounters; alien even to the culture that once counted him as one of its own. He's a foreign presence in the eyes of the people around him, sticking out like a particularly shiny sore thumb. He's nameless and faceless and often prefers to be voiceless, as well. And now he's deprived of the last thing that was his: the people who took him in.

The Mandalorian is _alone_.

With Razor Crest drifting silently through space, he clicks the switch of the autopilot and gets out of his seat. He turns towards the little floating crib and lowers himself on one knee to be at the child's eye-level. He doesn't know what it is he hopes to see in the child's gaze: blissful obliviousness? Awareness? An answer to his unworded question? What kind of atonement does Din Djarin want for everything he's done in his life, for everything he tried to erase by saving this little alien being?

The child is quiet, and at first the Mandalorian thinks he's asleep. He huffs out a shaky chuckle at his own presumptions. What are all his lofty thoughts to this infant?

Then the child raises its eyelids a little, its large ears turning slightly towards the Mandalorian like two solar panels towards the sun. He looks at the helmet's eye slit and past it, past the impenetrable black glass directly into Din Djarin's eyes. The child's expression is that of quiet, ageless sadness. It is a look no child should wear; it is a look the Mandalorian had once hidden under his newly-forged helmet, suffocating his grief under beskar as another would drown it in drink.

The Mandalorian scrambles for the vocoder switch underneath the edge of the helmet. His gloved fingers slip off the beskar, suddenly clumsy, and barely manage to hit the button in time before he drops his forehead against the edge of the crib, choking violently. There's a heat behind his eyelids, a burning wetness on his cheekbones, and he can't stop it, he can't stop it, he can't stop it. The vocoder is off now and the thick insulation of the helmet swallows all sound, but it cannot swallow the agony of his thoughts.

He weeps for the child. He weeps for himself. For having to leave the Armorer behind, alone with that pile of helmets. For the love of the people he was never allowed to know; for the unadulterated kindness the child showed him, even after all those years of being hunted, of being viewed as a piece of property. The child was a better person than Din Djarin could ever hope to be, and yet he too suffered the same fate, torn away from his origins and thrown into the endless galactic game of hunter and prey.

"I'm sorry," the Mandalorian chokes into the silence of the beskar.

"I'm sorry for what's happened to you," he says. "I'm sorry for what I've done to you."

"I love you," he says.

Then he switches the vocoder back on. His wet, shaky breaths come out gravelly, like the hisses of a malfunctioning engine. For a while he just stays like that, kneeling, his helmet against the metal of Kuiil's handywork. He's numb.

When he registers a stirring in his mind not entirely his own, he's barely even surprised. There's so much more to the child than he's ever suspected. And this certainly helps to make sense of the fact that in his fifty years the kid has never learned a single word.

The child reaches out, gentle as a breath. Probes around the edges of the Mandalorian's consciousness. The Mandalorian's memories are like a knot of inflamed tissue, but the foreign presence in his mind is mindful of that, is careful with its explorations.

The Mandalorian wonders if there was a point to switching the vocoder off. He tries not to think those things he said just a moment ago, tries to conceal them from the child; the child doesn't seem to insist on uncovering them.

Perhaps he already knows.

The child's mental presence is warm, a subdued golden shade. It's tinged with cold blue sadness. It's tinged with hope, too, and with affection - with so much simple straightforward adoration for him that the Mandalorian's breath hitches again. He feels ashamed, and like he hasn't earned this feeling.

He tries to show the child an abridged glimpse of his memories. He doesn't know how to do this at all, really, but he's used to practicing mental self-discipline and he thinks that helps. He wills the child to see an image of little Din Djarin all that time ago, clinging to the pauldron of a flying Mandalorian, protected, saved, safe. He wills the child to understand, _I will save you as they saved me. I will help you, I will protect you, I will guard you. This is the Way._

He feels the child's emotional reaction, like ripples on the surface of his mind. Something is offered to him in response - another image, another feeling. It's not a familiar memory; the events seem to be taking place before he and the child ever met. In this memory, the child is hiding. A branch of a tropical plant hangs over his head, the palmate leaves concealing him from view. The Mandalorian feels the child's fear and loneliness tightening his chest. But he feels hope, too, and patience, and something entirely beyond him - a connection to the world around him: to the path below his feet, to the plant above, to the sunrays piercing the foliage. He feels wisdom, and the accumulated experience of decades of life entirely foreign to him.

He feels, _I will protect you too. You are safe with me. I'm not the small child from your memories that you've always wanted to save, but perhaps you can help him if you help me._

He feels, _I love you._

There's a different word in Mando'a the Mandalorian would, if asked, use to describe the child and himself: _solus_. It conveys, at once, a sense of vulnerability and isolation; but also a sense of togetherness. They're _solus_ : alone. They're _solus_ : a clan of two, as one.


End file.
